In today’s episode we’re busting the major myth that calorie counting leads to fat loss. Calorie counting doesn’t work unless you understand what you’re looking at. The way most people go about calorie counting is completely misleading and will not lead to fat loss or health. We talk about what a calorie actually is and all the reasons that calories are not created equal.
Listen Now!
A calorie is a unit of measurement as is an inch or a mile or a degree. A calorie measures the energy potential within a food – how much energy (via heat) is released when it is burned in a closed system. Unfortunately, humans are not closed systems and the energy is not simply “burned”. Calories do far more than just release heat within the human body. In fact, that’s the least of it. They influence satiety, metabolic rate, brain activity, blood sugar and hormones in very different ways. For these reasons, calories are not all created equal when looking at their impact on people.
4 Reasons Calorie Counting Doesn’t Work (detailed in episode)
- The human body is not a closed system
- The source of calories determines the metabolic pathway. Different metabolic pathways have a massive difference on how we feel, our fat burning potential and our total energy usage.
- The source of calories, even within the same macronutrient group, determines their impact on hormones. The same number of calories from two different types of sugar can have a hugely different hormonal impact.
- The source of calories has a variable thermic effect
Practical Implementation
- Eat whole foods and limit processed foods
- Follow the golden rules of carbs & fat loss
- Monitor your hormonal biofeedback and your fat loss progress
- If you want to track calories or macros, back calculate from the point of balanced biofeedback and fat loss progress
Golden Rules of Carbs & Fat Loss